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Category Archives: Incredible videography

This is part 2 in Professor Iain Stewart’s series, “How Earth Made Us”. I highly recommend you take an hour to watch it as it is superlative!!!

Our planet has amazing power, and yet that’s rarely mentioned in our history books. This series tells the story of how the Earth has influenced human history, from the dawn of civilisation to the modern industrial age. It reveals for the first time on television how geology, geography and climate have been a far more powerful influence on the human story than has previously been acknowledged. A combination of epic story telling, visually stunning camerawork, extraordinary locations and passionate presenting combine to form a highly original version of human history.

Youtube video, “How Earth Made Us – Water”, uploaded on May 16, 2011 – Of all our planet’s forces perhaps none has greater power over us than water. For me water is the most magical force on earth. The presence of water shapes, renews and nourishes our planet. It’s our planet’s life blood, that pumps through it continuously…

Water

This time he explores our complex relationship with water. Visiting spectacular locations in Iceland, the Middle East and India, Iain shows how control over water has been central to human existence. He takes a precarious flight in a motorised paraglider to experience the cycle of freshwater that we depend on, discovers how villagers in the foothills of the Himalayas have built a living bridge to cope with the monsoon, and visits Egypt to reveal the secret of the pharaohs’ success. Throughout history, success has depended on our ability to adapt to and control constantly shifting sources of water.

Discover why societies have succeeded or failed, and how the environment has influenced every aspect of our history from art to industry, religion to war, world domination or collapse. Visiting some of the most iconic places on Earth, How Earth Made Us overturns preconceptions about our civilisations and our cultures to offer a new perspective on who we are today.

Credit for this beautiful Emperor Penguin film goes to Ruedi & Priska Abbühl… And the Music … All glory goes to composer Mike Rowland from the album “My Elfin Friends,” who is currently compiling a book about the power of healing through music…I have the impression that to penguins, man is a different kind of penguin, unpredictable, occasionally violent, but tolerable company when he sits still and admires Nature and leaves it as he found it. ~Aetopus/AC

WHERE PENGUINS LIVE: Penguins do not live in the Arctic. They live on the shores of Antarctica and they also live in the south of Australia, New Zealand, America & Africa. The most northerly place that penguins live is on the Galapagos Islands which is near Ecuador in South America. Even though there is ice in Canada and the Arctic, penguins don’t live there or in the northern half of the world.

No other animal other than penguins can draw attention to the environmental damaged caused by oil and gas drilling (fracking and mountaintop removal), my reason for ending this video with the message “NO TO ARCTIC DRILLING!” ~Aetopus/ACPlease see my previous blog, “Fracking Hell ~ A Catastrophe!”

Here is a great YouTube video, “Birth and March of Emperor Penguins“, from Nature’s Great Events – In the coldest part of the planet, Emperor Penguins breed and give birth to their young, only to begin a great march toward the coast.

“The future is in the hands of those who explore… and from all the beauty they discover while crossing perpetually receding frontiers, they develop for nature and humankind an infinite love.” ~ Jacques Cousteau

In 2010 and 2011 Oceana partnered with SeaLife Conservation and their eco-research sailboat, the Derek M. Baylis, and the Monterey Bay Sanctuary to explore and document Monterey Bay and other incredible West Coast ocean habitats with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) and camera ~ “FATHOMS DEEP – Protecting the Seafloor”, narrated by Alexandra Cousteau.

“Mankind has had an affinity for the ocean since our earliest beginnings. Near or far, the ocean draws us in. The longer you stare at the ocean, the more you take in its wonder. The deeper you go, the more you appreciate its complexity. Landing on the soft substrata of the sea floor is like arriving on another planet. It appears flat and barren, but in fact, it is teeming with life.”

Wikipedia web site has a lengthy bio on Alexandra Phillipe Cousteau, the granddaughter of world famous French explorer and filmmaker Jacques-Yves Cousteau: “A member of the third generation of the Cousteau family to devote their lives to exploring and explaining the natural world, Cousteau first went on expedition with her father, Philippe Cousteau, when she was four months old, and learned to scuba dive with her grandfather, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, when she was seven. She grew up traveling the globe, developed a passion for adventure and learned firsthand the value of conserving the natural world. Of her father and grandfather, Cousteau says, “The best example they gave me was the importance of living a life of consequence, value, and meaning. I honor their memories by creating a legacy of my own in speaking out for the preservation of our blue planet and all its waters.”

WORLDWATERDAY2013

DON’T MISS:
1) the opportunity to watch online Cirque du Soleil’s incredible, “One Night for One Drop” for a donation of $5.00 or more!!!

2) the remarkable video – ‘One Drop – A Poetic Tale’ at the end of this blog.

Coinciding with World Water Day, ONE DROP will host its inaugural ONE NIGHT for ONE DROP in Las Vegas, NV, USA, on March 22, 2013. For one incredible evening, international leaders, neighbours, philanthropists, and global citizens will come together to make a dream a reality – a world where every human being has access to water and can live in dignity and health.

In celebration of World Water Day on March 22, we will present One Night for ONE DROP, sponsored by Lamborghini and MGM Resorts International. This original production will feature more than 230 Cirque du Soleil artists and guest performers. We’ve announced today that the event will be filmed with 12 cameras and a 90-minute special will be created. The broadcast will be available for online viewing at onenight.ONEDROP.org from March 25 to 31 with a donation of $5 or more.

With a donation of $5.00 or more we can all be a part of this gala performance!!! The broadcast will be available for online viewing at onenight.ONEDROP.org from March 25 to 31.

Jackie Evancho, the 12 year-old singer is reaching ever greater heights, it appears. She’s giving a one-night benefit in Las Vegas with Cirque du Soleil and it involves a good deal of high-wire stuff. Watch, if you dare. Yes, this will be part of the finale. She is singing “Hymn For The World” which Cirque has previously recorded, so the music is likely the backing track from the prior use. Jackie will also be performing another piece, but that’s being kept secret as of now. She swims well, so chances are that it will have some involvement with the pool underneath the giant elevating stage of the “O” Theater.

ONE DROP – a non-profit organization established in 2007 by Guy Laliberté, Founder of Cirque du Soleil – supports access to water and raises individual and community awareness of the need to mobilize so that safe water is accessible to all, in sufficient quantity, today and forever. ONE DROP USA, a 501(c)(3) public charitable organization, is its American counterpart.

GAIA—a creative project designed by Guy Laliberté for ONE DROP—is a body of work bearing witness to the beauty of the planet, as well as the fragility of Earth with regards to the universe. In September 2009, Guy Laliberté became the first Canadian private space explorer. During his 11-day stay on board the ISS, Laliberté carried out his Poetic Social Mission(see remarkable video below) and chose to use this unique opportunity to raise individual and community awareness of water-related issues and to help achieve sustainable change in terms of universal water access and protection.

The artistic core of the Poetic social mission event was a poetic tale written especially for the occasion by renowned novelist and Man Booker Prize winner Yann Martel. The tale is gradually revealed by personalities from all walks of life as the program takes us through 14 cities around the world on a journey that begins in Montreal and ends in Moscow.

Let’s all celebrateWorldWaterDay

and enjoy online viewing of Cirque du Soleil’s “One Night for One Drop” extravaganza by donating to One Drop’s cause to use this unique opportunity to raise individual and community awareness of water-related issues and to help achieve sustainable change in terms of universal water access and protection.

Seadragons are some of the most ornately camouflaged creatures on the planet. Their spectacular gossamer, leaf-shaped appendages over their entire bodies enable them to blend in perfectly in their habitat of seaweed and kelp found in water to the south and east of Australia’s coast.

Seadragon males are responsible for childbearing. The male dragons have a spongy brood patch on the underside of the tail where females deposit their bright-pink eggs during mating. The eggs are fertilized during the transfer from the female to the male. The males incubate the eggs and release miniature sea dragons into the water after about four to six weeks (as seen in the video).

Seadragons survive on tiny crustaceans such as mysids, or sea lice. They are frequently captured by divers hoping to keep them as pets. In fact, such takings shrank their numbers so critically by the early 1990s that the Australian government placed a complete protection on both species. Pollution and habitat loss have also hurt their numbers, and they are currently listed as near threatened.

Leafy seadragon documentary film “The Vanishing Dragon”, uploaded to YouTube by madge1964 on Jan 5, 2009, was filmed in South Australia. The complete documentary DVD can be purchased at www.abysspictures.com

OrlandoSeaWorld breeds rare seadragons ~ “We see people come up to this (seadragon) exhibit every day, and they’re just amazed to see that there’s something so unusual-looking. They’re a beautiful representation of the marine life of the ocean,” said Teryl Nolan Hesse, assistant curator for aquariums at SeaWorld Orlando. “They come here, see this, and they get excited about it. And when they’re excited about something, they want to learn more.”

Hector’s & Maui’s Dolphins – Countdown to Extinction

Entanglement in gill and trawl nets has devastated the species to near extinction and is killing them faster than they can breed. Since the introduction of nylon filament nets in the 1970s, Hector’s dolphin numbers have dropped from 29,000 to less than 7,000. The situation for Maui’s dolphins, a subspecies of Hector’s dolphins, is even worse. More than 90% are already lost. With fewer than 80 survivors and less than 20 breeding females, Maui’s dolphins are facing imminent extinction.

Hector’s and Maui’s dolphins breed very slowly. Even under ideal circumstances a population of 100 individuals can only grow by two animals a year at the most.Saving this species is a race against time that can only be won if fishing-related mortality is prevented by excluding gill and trawl nets from the animals habitat. New protection measures introduced in 2008 were a significant step in the right direction, but fall short of what is needed to facilitate population recovery and avoid extinction.

Hector’s dolphins continue to decline because protection measures are inadequate. Unless things change, the species will become extinct. Yet, in the absence of fisheries bycatch, Hector’s dolphins could recover to at least half of their original population size within a few decades. But for over 25 years Hector’s dolphin protection has been marred by unsuccessful half measures, lack of political will, delays, the unwillingness to translate the best available scientific knowledge into effective management decisions, and an unhealthy reliance on information from New Zealand’s fishing industry.

About the size of a human child Hector’s Dolphins are among the smallest dolphin species in the world. Found only in the coastal waters of New Zealand, where there is a very active fishing industry, they are also among the most endangered.

“At the moment there are about 27 percent of the numbers there were in the 1970s,” said Liz Slooten a marine biologist at the University of Otago. “Many Dolphins you’d expect there to be tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of individuals. But Hector’s Dolphins? There are just over 7,000 individuals.”

Hector’s Dolphins and a subspecies called Maui’s Dolphins are frequently killed when they are inadvertently trapped in the fine mesh of gill nets. Despite resistance from the fishing industry researches aim to create protection zones to prevent the extinction of this threatened species.

Anderson Cooper dives unprotected with great white sharks and Michael Rutzen, known as “The Sharkman”, a South African who’s spent more time up close with the ocean’s most feared predator than anyone else.

According to Rutzen ,”the great white sharks are far from mindless killing machines – great whites are smart, curious and not out to kill humans.” He says that when looking for a great white shark he can swim with, he needs one who is calm, curious and one he refers to as a ‘player’ – so relaxed, has a nice personality and woke up on the ‘right side of the reef’.

Michael Rutzen plunges freely with a great white shark. Rutzen eats, sleeps, breathes and dreams of sharks and is on a one-man crusade to prove that rather than being the crazed man-eater from Jaws they are in fact sociable and approachable creatures to anyone who understands their body language. Uploaded byhalitkiraz on Aug 22, 2009

I trust that you enjoyed these videos and will share. Let’s hear from you ~ we appreciate your feedback.